Families make decisions around the kitchen table about military service for their sons and daughters. All should know that in recent years the conditions of “employment” in the military have changed, and not just because of the Iraq war.
The American military has always been vulnerable to political pressures; everyone in uniform must obey orders. The Clinton administration brought drastic change in 1994 when it eliminated a rule that exempted women from support assignments involving a high risk of capture. The consequences of dropping the “risk rule” became apparent in March 2003, when female soldiers were captured during the campaign to liberate Iraq.
Pfc. Lori Piestewa, who was raising two young children alone, became the first female soldier killed in Iraq. Her best friend, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, was rescued 10 days later by a Special Operations Task Force. The Washington Post claimed Lynch had resisted capture, suggesting she was a female Rambo to be admired and emulated by little girls everywhere. But months later, during an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Lynch courageously discussed medical evidence that she had been brutally raped while unconscious for four hours after the ambush near Nazireya, Iraq. A December 2003 NBC News report showed an Iraqi video of Lynch and Piestewa in captivity—bruised, bloody and barely alive. Feminists quickly dropped Lynch as an icon; her troubling story no longer fit the Amazonian myth.
But not all the blame for an increasingly liberal military culture belongs to Clinton. In 2004, Army generals and bureaucrats in the Pentagon, without authorization or the legally required prior notice to Congress, began redefining and circumventing Defense Department rules regarding women in or near direct ground combat units that attack the enemy. Army officials initially denied changes in policy, and then later used semantics and sophistry to mislead many members of Congress who asked about evidence that rules were being broken.
In March 2008, an infantry battalion of the Indiana National Guard deployed to Afghanistan with 39 female soldiers. Officials claimed that the unit’s mission was temporarily changed to convoy security. What will happen when the Army needs that same infantry battalion, still required by current regulations to be all-male, to attack the enemy in direct ground combat? Some Army officials have claimed that in these situations female soldiers would be evacuated just before a battle begins, but such a plan would be unrealistic. Any helicopters or Humvees available would be needed to evacuate injured and wounded soldiers, not to remove female soldiers.
If the Army wants to change policies affecting military women, it should comply with laws mandating formal notice to Congress well in advance. The law also requires a legal analysis of the effect of proposed policy changes on young women’s exemption from Selective Service obligations. The Army has ignored these mandates, while disregarding and nullifying Defense Department regulations that remain in effect. Since the Supreme Court has tied women’s Selective Service exemption to land combat rules, the current “anything-goes” situation could help the ACLU to win their latest court challenge against male-only Selective Service obligations.
Some resentful men support this because they blame all women for the extreme demands of feminists. “You want equality,” they write, “so why shouldn’t you women suffer, bleed and die on an equal basis with men?” But Army surveys have shown that the majority of enlisted women are strongly opposed to land combat assignments on the same basis as men. They should not be blamed for the demands of civilian ideologues. We are proud of our female soldiers, who have proven their courage many times, but in conditions of close combat, they do not have an equal opportunity to survive, or to help fellow soldiers survive.
False egalitarianism affects cultural attitudes and can degrade personal relationships between men and women. Respect is weakened when men are psychologically conditioned to treat women like men, in training and in combat. In May 2008 former Army Pfc. Jessica True wrote a letter to members of the House Armed Services Committee, describing sexual assault and physical pain inflicted on her by fellow soldiers who resented her assignment to a formerly all-male artillery battalion. Indifferent men did nothing to help because they had been conditioned to treat women like men.
Feminists maintain that violence against women is OK—as long as it happens at the hands of the enemy. The “ungendered military” is not a step forward for women—it is a step backward for the civilized expectation that good men protect and defend women.
Shouldn’t young women know about the new “conditions of employment” before they sign up? And if it is such a good idea to order women into infantry battalions needed to attack the enemy in war, why not post notices in recruiting offices? If officials are reluctant to do this, they should ask themselves why.
The homosexual exclusion law
Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10—passed by both houses of Congress in 1993 with veto-proof, bi-partisan majorities—does not include the flawed cornerstone principle of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” but does give 15 reasons for exclusion of homosexuals in the armed services. Here’s a summary:
The U.S. Constitution gives to Congress the powers to make rules for armed services.
There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces.
Congress establishes qualifications for and conditions of military service.
The primary purpose of the armed forces is to prepare for and to prevail in combat should the need arise.
The conduct of military operations requires members of the armed forces to make extraordinary sacrifices, in-cluding the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide for the common defense.
Success in combat requires high morale, good order and discipline and unit cohesion.
Unit cohesion is the bond of trust that makes a military unit more effective than individual unit members.
Military life is fundamentally different from civilian life, with its own laws, rules, customs, and traditions, in-cluding numerous restrictions on personal behavior, which would not be acceptable in civilian society.
Standards of conduct begin at the moment the member enters military status and end when a person is dis-charged or otherwise separated from the armed forces.
Standards of conduct apply at all times, whether the service member is on base or off base, and whether the member is on duty or off duty.
Members of the armed forces must be ready at all times for combat.
Worldwide deployment makes it necessary for members of the armed forces involuntarily to accept primitive conditions with little or no privacy.
The prohibition against homosexual conduct is long-standing military law and continues to be necessary.
Personnel policies exclude persons whose presence would create an unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.
Homosexual acts create an unacceptable risk.
Where’s Mom?
Young women also should know and consider the impact of military life on their future families.
The 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, on which I served, analyzed the impact of military life on families. During the first Persian Gulf War (1991-1992), an unprecedented 40,000 female soldiers deployed. A wire service photograph of one of them, kissing her tiny baby goodbye, troubled the nation. The commission heard from child psychologists and experts about what happens to children and mothers who are separated for months at a time. Several members of Congress, including liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., sponsored “Gulf War Orphan” bills to reduce risks for the children of deployed soldiers, particularly those with only one parent.
Years later, cultural amnesia has set in. Today, the National Guard allows single or dual-service mothers with multiple children to enlist. The Pentagon entices single moms, or divorced mothers with custody of several children, with generous medical, education and child-care benefits. But the women pay a price later on, and so do their children.
Former Army Captain “Rhonda” (not her real name) is a graduate of West Point who is now the fulltime mother of three. Writing to me through the “Confidential Contact” spot on my Web site, Rhonda said that the demands of her military career prevented her from forming an emotional bond with her oldest son. She did not understand this until her third child was born, after she left the Army.
“I wish someone would have taken me aside and told me . . . things that young women aren’t even thinking about at 17, 18 and 19 years old . . . You should not have children because it is too emotionally devastating to leave them.”
And then there’s the effect of separation in marriages.
Rates of military divorces, even in the frequently deployed Army, have been holding steady at about 3.2 percent, but The Associated Press reported in March that divorce rates among military women, historically twice as high as men’s, jumped to three times higher in 2007. Counseling can help troubled couples, but there are limits to what the professionals can do when family and gender issues become increasingly complicated in the crucible of war.
Cohabitation 24/7
Radical ideologues who want to impose a San Francisco agenda on the military expect to make significant gains in the 2008 elections. They think their best asset is the public’s misperception of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The catch-phrase describes a proposal to accommodate homosexuals in the military if they did not say they were homosexual. Congress considered that policy, but rejected it as unworkable. Instead of approving “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” members chose to codify and confirm language nearly identical to Defense Department regulations in place since 1981. The resulting law, Section 654, Title 10, provides 15 findings and reasons why homosexuals are not eligible for military service (see sidebar, page 21). It passed with bipartisan, veto-proof majority votes. Clinton signed the law, but contradicted its meaning with enforcement regulations that are known as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The disparity between the actual law and Clinton’s administrative policy has confused the issue ever since.
The legislation’s only “compromise” allowed the Clinton administration to drop “the question” regarding homosexuality that used to appear on routine induction forms. The Secretary of Defense can (and should) restore that inquiry at any time—no additional legislation is required.
Lately, Democrat leaders in Congress have talked about repealing the 1993 law. That’s what brought me to the House Armed Services Committee on July 23. Accompanying me was Brian Jones, a former Delta Force soldier who helped rescue fallen colleagues in the “Black Hawk Down” incident in 1993.
Jones and I were invited to testify, but liberal committee members showed little interest in what we had to say. Repeal of the 1993 law would result in forced cohabitation with homosexuals, 24/7, in all military communities, including Army and Marine infantry battalions, Special Operations Forces, Navy SEALS and all the ships at sea, including submarines. Sexual tension in conditions of “forced intimacy” would weaken the bond of selfless service and trust among soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
We also said the military does not do things half-way. Anyone who disagrees, for any reason, will be treated with “zero tolerance.” T>
The homosexual exclusion law
Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10—passed by both houses of Congress in 1993 with veto-proof, bi-partisan majorities—does not include the flawed cornerstone principle of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” but does give 15 reasons for exclusion of homosexuals in the armed services. Here’s a summary:
The U.S. Constitution gives to Congress the powers to make rules for armed services.
There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces.
Congress establishes qualifications for and conditions of military service.
The primary purpose of the armed forces is to prepare for and to prevail in combat should the need arise.
The conduct of military operations requires members of the armed forces to make extraordinary sacrifices, in-cluding the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide for the common defense.
Success in combat requires high morale, good order and discipline and unit cohesion.
Unit cohesion is the bond of trust that makes a military unit more effective than individual unit members.
Military life is fundamentally different from civilian life, with its own laws, rules, customs, and traditions, in-cluding numerous restrictions on personal behavior, which would not be acceptable in civilian society.
Standards of conduct begin at the moment the member enters military status and end when a person is dis-charged or otherwise separated from the armed forces.
Standards of conduct apply at all times, whether the service member is on base or off base, and whether the member is on duty or off duty.
Members of the armed forces must be ready at all times for combat.
Worldwide deployment o make the new policy “work,” valuable training time will be diverted to “diversity” training reflecting the attitudes of civilian gay activist groups. This training will attempt to overcome the normal human desire for modesty and privacy in sexual matters—a quest that is inappropriate for the military and unlikely to succeed.
Complaints about inappropriate actions conveying a homosexual message or approach, short of physical touching and assault, will be met with career-killing presumptions and counter-accusations about the motives of the person who complains. In messy, emotionally charged disputes about such matters, commanders themselves could be accused of “homophobic attitudes” if they take the side of the heterosexual person over the homosexual one. Who is “bullying” whom? In close quarters, the effect on unit cohesion would be the same. Due to fears of reprisal, untold thousands of people will not protest, but they will leave or avoid the all-volunteer force. No one has explained how this radical cultural change would improve discipline, morale or readiness in our military—the only one we have.
Committee liberals did not want to hear this. Instead, they chose to launch a barrage of absurd questions, personal insults and diversionary insinuations that, ironically, proved our point. If homosexuals are regarded as a special class, not even generals would be immune to that kind of treatment.
In 2007 former Marine Gen. Peter Pace was denied a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he expressed personal views in opposition to adultery and homosexuals in the military. The hostility he faced is a template for similar treatment of any person or organization—whether it’s the Marines or the Boy Scouts, Peter Pace or your local school principal—whose opinions or religious faith conflict with official policy.
This brings the issue back to the kitchen tables of America. Parents and citizens must take a close look at the social revolution going on in our military. Voters should find and support leaders who will take these issues seriously. The Center for Military Readiness is non-partisan, but our Web site, www.cmrlink.org, provides information on where the presidential candidates stand.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., favors repeal of the 1993 law regarding homosexuals in the military. The “People” section of his campaign Web site sports a rainbow-striped logo signaling support for the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered (LGBT) community. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr wrote a June 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed advocating professed homosexuals in the military. In contrast, Sen. John McCain voted for the 1993 law. He stated in a letter to CMR that he still supports the statute, and campaign officials have said he will not endorse efforts to repeal it.
Republicans in Congress have not dealt with this issue in a long time, but that is no excuse for their failure to show up at the House Armed Services Committee hearing. We were prepared for challenges from serious individuals, but members of the committee did not behave like mature legislators responsible for our military. The Center for Military Readiness is under attack from well-funded groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, who will stop at nothing until they get their way.
The bill to repeal the law will not come up until after the election, but it is necessary to prepare for that move right now. Our military is the best in the world, and we have the responsibility as citizens to keep it that way.
Paid for by Focus on the Family Action.
